Wherever he was, Mahatma Gandhi fought for human rights. He led India non-violently into independence. Marking his 150th birthday, Anja Bohnhof pays tribute to the freedom fighter with photographic insights.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
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Tracking down Gandhi through photographs
Wherever he was, Mahatma Gandhi fought for human rights. He led India non-violently into independence. Marking his 150th birthday, Anja Bohnhof pays tribute to the freedom fighter with her photographic insights.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1893: Waiting room at Pietermaritzburg Station, Natal, South Africa
On June 7, 1893, shortly after his arrival in South Africa, Gandhi was thrown out of first class as a 'non-white' on the train journey from Durban to Pretoria. The night in the waiting room of the Pietermaritzburg train station was the turning point in his life. Gandhi transformed himself from a shy lawyer into an activist for the rights of the Indian minority in South Africa.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1913: Community cell in the central prison of Pretoria, South Africa
Gandhi spent almost six years of his life in prisons in South Africa and India for civil disobedience. He used these times productively, studying and writing several texts within the prison walls. After his release from Pretoria prison on December 18, 1913, Gandhi set off for India and left South Africa for good.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1917: Motihari Station, Purvi Champaran, Bihar, India
In 1917, Gandhi's "Champaran Campaign" led him to Bihar, which is still one of the poorest states in India. There, he supported small farmers in their struggle against the compulsory cultivation of indigo plants imposed by British landowners. After Gandhi's return from South Africa, this was the first of many non-violent actions on Indian soil.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1917/18: Gandhi Adarsh Middle School, Bihar, India
While fighting for the rights of indigo farmers in Champaran, Gandhi also sought to develop the region by following his visions of Indian self-government. The school in the small village of Barharwa Lakhansen was one of the first he founded between 1917 and 1918 in this region. Gandhi wanted to fight illiteracy and boost people's self-esteem.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1919: Navajivan Trust, Archive, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
Early on, Gandhi relied on the power of the media: the weekly magazine Indian Opinion, which he published, was an important mouthpiece in the fight against discrimination against Indians in South Africa. In India, he began publishing Navajivan (New Life), a magazine written in his mother tongue Gujarati, as of 1919. More papers were published and mostly dealt with economic and social issues.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1936: Sevagram Ashram, Wardha, Maharashtra, India
From 1936 to 1946, Gandhi lived in Sevagram Aschram near Wardha in central India. There, he received guests and political greats from all over the world. His former hut is almost in its original condition and testifies to Gandhi's simple lifestyle, which was reduced to the essentials. Gandhi's motto was: "My life is my message!"
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1927: Sodepur Ashram, Barrackpore, West Bengal, India
The Sodepur Ashram north of Kolkata was founded in 1921. Between 1927 and 1947, Gandhi stayed there for long periods and met with leading politicians. He left for Noakhali on November 6, 1946 to pacify raging riots between Muslims and Hindus, but the division of India could no longer be avoided.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1946: Sadhurkhil Village, Noakhali, Chittagong District, Bangladesh
In November 1946, Gandhi traveled to Noakhali in what is now Bangladesh to end the cruel massacres in the area. This was due to the expected independence of India and the threatened division of the country into Muslim and Hindu territories. At the age of 77, Gandhi set out on a difficult peace march through the largely inaccessible region of the Ganges Delta.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
1948: Triveni Sangam, Uttar Pradesh, India
After his death on January 30, 1948, Gandhi's body was ceremonially burned in Delhi. Much of the ash was buried at the confluence of the Ganges with the Yamuna River and the mythical Sarasvati River. According to Hindu belief, the soul of a deceased person enters Nirvana directly here. Small amounts of ash were brought for worship to numerous cities and villages in India.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
2019: Five years tracking Gandhi
During her research for "Tracking Gandhi," the Dortmund photographer Anja Bohnhof also visited the Mahila ashram in India, where young women are educated and taught craft skills. Bohnhof's illustrated book draws a photographic portrait of the Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi. The National Gandhi Museum in New Delhi is displaying her works from October 15, 2019.
Image: Anja Bohnhof
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They are large-format photographs of offices, bedrooms and prisons. Some show street scenes, city views or capture entire landscapes. But only a few show people. Photographer Anja Bohnhof's pictures strike a relaxed, narrative tone. There is no hectic documentary photography here, as one would expect from the turbulent, earth-shattering life of Indian lawyer and activist Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948).
With the illustrated book Tracking Gandhi, Bohnhof has succeeded in creating a photographic biography, just in time for Gandhi's 150th birthday on Oct. 2, 2019 and on which the Indian freedom fighter is remembered worldwide.
India, Bangladesh, Great Britain, South Africa — wherever Gandhi lived and worked, Bohnhof went looking for traces of his presence. For five years, she traveled around the world, visiting and photographing three categories of places with her analogue camera. There are those that Gandhi is still remembered for — such as his birthplace in Porbandar or ashrams in India, or other places — such as prisons in South Africa and India, where Gandhi was imprisoned for years. There are also those without a visible legacy.
Opulent illustrated book
With her opulent, bilingual book, Bohnhof traces Gandhi's life in illustrations. Each picture is accompanied by well-researched texts, as well as quotations by the freedom fighter, to offer an enlightening read. "It wasn't my intention to reflect Gandhi's aura in all these places," the photographer said as she explained her approach. "But it is the only possible approach to Mahatma Gandhi when you're including the visual into the narrative."
Already during his lifetime, Gandhi, whose birth name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was world-famous. In South Africa, where he had moved in 1893, he fought against racial segregation and for equal rights. In India, where he returned in 1915, he began leading the independence movement. Gandhi demanded human rights for Dalit, the lowest caste in India, who are considered "untouchable," as well as for women.
Gandhi's Champaran Campaign led him to Bihar in 1917, where he supported farmers in their struggles with British land ownersImage: Anja Bohnhof
He called for reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims, fought against colonial exploitation, and for an economic system characterized by a peasant lifestyle. Nonviolent resistance, civil disobedience and hunger strikes — with such methods the Indian independence movement forced the end of British colonial rule in 1947 and India became divided. Half a year later, Gandhi was assassinated.
Anja Bohnhof, born in 1974, has already completed several book and exhibition projects on the Indian subcontinent. In 2012, she created "Bahak," a series of portraits of Indian porters on the streets of Kolkata. In "Krishak" she accompanied West Bengali farmers harvesting rice in 2018. In 2015, the Indian Cultural Council awarded her a prize for her German-Indian commitment.
The Tracking Gandhi book, published by Edition Inventio, is also accompanied by an exhibition. The National Gandhi Museum in New Delhi is showing the works from October 15 2019.
